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Mobile Press-Register 200th Anniversary: Mobile goes from 'Athens of the South' to burned and bankrupt (1830-1839)

The city of Mobile led public education efforts with the establishment of Barton Academy in 1836. The school was used by Catholic, Methodist, Trinity and Bethal groups to teach classes. In 1952, Barton Academy became the state's first public school. Today, efforts are underway to restore the school.

Editor's note: As the Press-Register celebrates its 200th anniversary, the newspaper and AL.com are taking a decade-by-decade look at major events that shaped Mobile and Baldwin counties, the Gulf Coast and the nation during those years. Today we look back on the years from 1830 to 1839.

The 1830s may have been Mobile’s most important decade of the 19th century, a period of explosive growth fueled by an emerging cotton trade that generated enormous wealth, ending with a financial panic that triggered America’s first municipal bankruptcy.

The founding of Spring Hill College gave Mobile its first institution of higher education, citizens laid the foundation for a modern public school system, and a building boom added landmarks to the city’s skyline.

“Our city may be said to have been built during the ten-year period before 1837,” wrote prominent citizen and politician Henry Hitchcock, according to William Brantley’s “Henry Hitchcock of Mobile: 1816-1839.”

By 1830, the cotton trade was in its infancy. Bales of the cash crop had begun floating down the rivers a few years earlier from the large plantations in the Black Belt. From there, they would be loaded onto barges for the journey to large, oceangoing vessels that the Mobile River still was too shallow to accommodate.

This trade created a boom town decades before Birmingham’s rapid growth would earn it the “Magic City” nickname.

Along with the economic opportunity came a huge swell in the local population. Census figures show that no other decade in Mobile’s three-century history comes close to matching the percentage increase during those 10 years.

Mobile in 1830 had 3,194 people, about a third of whom were slaves. Free blacks accounted for another 400 of that total, according to “Historic Mobile: An Illustrated History of the Mobile Bay Region,” by Michael Thomason.

It would be decades before the slaves would win their freedom and a century more before blacks would gain full equality under the law. But according to Thomason’s history, the city’s slaves suffered less harsh treatment than their counterparts in the Black Belt. Landowners there considered the management of slaves in Mobile to be “scandalously liberal,” he wrote.

‘Athens of the South’

By the end of the decade, the overall population had jumped to 12,672, an increase of nearly 300 percent.

It was just the beginning.

Cotton exports from Mobile averaged about 100,000 bales a year in the 1830s. By the “Golden Fifties,” it would grow to 500,000, with a peak of 700,000 from 1855 to 1856. Thomason wrote that the transformation made Mobile the “Athens of the South.”

Mobile made great strides during the decade in improving its infrastructure, laying water mains, installing fire hydrants and beginning gas service.

According to Thomason’s “Mobile: The New History of Alabama’s First City,” Mobile began setting aside land in 1834 for Bienville Square, the city’s first park. Residents began building homes in the now-historic De Tonti Square area, and the Oakleigh District went up in the mid-1830s. Christ Church Episcopal Cathedral also rose during the decade.

In 1836, Mayor George Washington Owen signed a contract with England native James Caldwell to provide gas lighting for the next 30 years. Under the contract, Caldwell would receive $40 for each street lamp installed, plus $30 for upkeep, according to “Mobile Renaissance: Celebrating Mobile's Tricentennial.”

Within two years, the company he formed was serving 850 homes and businesses.

Two enduring religious landmarks began to take shape during the decade. The Catholic Church laid the cornerstone for the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in 1835, just a few years after Pope Pius VIII created the Diocese of Mobile. Construction of the cathedral would continue for more than 60 years.

In 1836, Mobile saw the construction of Government Street Presbyterian Church, a Greek Revival design by the same architects who designed Barton Academy. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Records from the University of South Alabama Archives show that residents built a Greek Revival hospital, City Hospital of Mobile, in the 1830s. It later would be known as Port Hospital and Mobile General Hospital. It treated Civil War soldiers and yellow fever patients. It was transferred to the University of South Alabama in 1970 and became USA Medical Center.

Outside of Mobile, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers completed Fort Morgan in 1833. Capt. John Grant dredged a channel connecting Mobile Bay to the Mississippi Sound in 1839, allowing uninterrupted ship travel between Mobile and New Orleans.

Frivolity finds a home

A city that always has enjoyed a good party got a heavy dose of frivolity in the ’30s, as well. Cotton broker Michael Krafft and his friends spontaneously grabbed cowbells, hoes and rakes from a local hardware store after at a gathering a restaurant in 1831.

The boisterous New Year’s celebration led to the Cowbellion de Rakin Society, the city’s first Mardi Gras organization.

A local newspaper provided this account: “Mobile had its noisiest New Year’s celebration on record today because of some one dozen of the city’s leading citizens who conducted an impromptu bell-ringing parade through the downtown streets.”

The article went on to state that the rowdy crowd made its way to the home of John Stocking Jr., the city’s mayor, who hosted the men for breakfast and said no charges would be filed.

Two decades later, members of the group would travel to New Orleans to help residents there form their own societies.

The 1830s also brought the first sailing races to Mobile Bay, a recreation activity that occurs to this day.

Education takes root

The first Catholic bishop of Mobile, Michael Portier, founded Spring Hill College -- one of the first in the Southeast. Classes opened in May 1830 with 30 students in a hotel. The school originally served as a grammar school and high school, as well as a college. The school laid the cornerstone for the first permanent structure on July 4 of the following year. It awarded its first four degrees in 1837.

A local news article from the time describes construction of the school, to be located on the hill overlooking Mobile.

“For several months now, Father Michael Portier and a handful of priests have toiled daily, cutting trees, clearing away fields and constructing classrooms and living facilities at the site of the institution,” the article states. “Each week, one member of the party journeys back to Mobile for supplies and food.”

At the same time Mobile was beginning to develop higher education, prominent citizens were starting to plant the seeds of a public education system

Author John Sledge wrote in “The Pillared City: Greek Revival Mobile,” that the school board acquired land in 1830. Construction of Barton Academy began on Feb. 13, 1836 -- the same day construction started on Government Street Presbyterian Church.

Historians credit local millionaire Henry Hitchcock as the driving force behind both landmarks.

Previously used as a private school, society or lodge rooms and apartments, it sold to the school board for $2,750. Named for Willoughby Barton, a state representative who had sponsored legislation creating a school board in Mobile, it would become Mobile’s first public school building.

Fire and plague

Although the city grew rapidly during the decade, Mobile also suffered devastating setbacks during the 1830s, battling fires and yellow fever and financial collapse.

According to the Mobile Fire-Rescue Department’s own records and a book produced by the Boston Fire Department in 1858 that collected information about major fires from cities across the country, Mobile sustained four serious conflagrations during the 1830s. It was part of a 27-year stretch in which fires caused an estimated $3.375 million in damage.

A November 1837 blaze took out a number of buildings, causing a large amount of property loss. Firefighters attempted to stop the flames by pulling down several wood-frame dwellings, but high winds complicated those efforts. Officials pegged the loss at $30,000.

The following year, a fire broke out in a large brick building and spread to the adjoining four-story structure, containing the store of John Stimpson and the counting houses of Childs, Hiblen & Co. and Russell, Stebin & Co. The blaze destroyed the building, causing an estimated loss of $60,000.

Those fires were nothing, though, compared to the blazes that devastated the city in 1839. Coming about a week after a smaller fire on Dauphin Street, an Oct. 7 inferno on Conception Street between Conti and Dauphin streets destroyed what was left of Mobile’s buildings from its Spanish, French and British eras, according to “Mobile Renaissance: Celebrating Mobile's Tricentennial.”

Wind blew from south to east, to Rich’s bake shop. Firefighters blew up a large number of buildings in a desperate attempt to save the northern and western parts of the city.

“The fire was without a doubt the work of incendiaries,” the article stated. “It continued during nearly the whole night, all of which time, refreshments were liberally furnished by Mr. James F. M’Bride, at his residence on Dauphin Street.”

When the last embers had been extinguished, officials tallied the awful toll: 600 buildings destroyed, with damages estimated at $2 million.

Two days later, fire struck again, this time at the Mansion House at about 2 a.m.

“Still Another Tremendous Conflagration!!” screamed a headline in the Mercantile Advertiser.

The flames spread to a “magnificent” new hotel still under construction and destroyed the post office and Planters’ and Merchants’ bank.

“With the most painful and melancholy feelings we again announce the recurrence of another most awful and destructive conflagration in our devoted city,” the article stated.

A later article reported that the bank vault was fire-proofed.

Over the next couple of decades, the local press reported various theories about who was responsible for the 1839 fires. Perhaps the most credible, historian Sledge wrote, was the notorious Copeland Gang. James Copeland confessed to setting the blazes as a diversionary tactic so that he and his men could smuggle thousands of dollars’ worth of stolen loot out of the city.

Mobile in the 1830s was ill-equipped to fight fires. A full-time, professional fire department was still decades away. In 1838 or ’39, according to a history maintained by the Mobile Fire-Rescue Department, the Mobile Fire Department Association formed with delegates from the six existing fire companies. The law exempted members from the poll tax.

Under city law, people attending fires were required to assist, facing a $10 to $50 fine if they refused. That money funded a Fireman’s Benevolent fund, created by ordinance in 1839, to help sick and infirm firemen.

Still, water with which to fight fires was hard to come by. According to the Fire Department history, the city signed a 20-year franchise agreement in 1836 with Henry Hitchcock to provide water. But the venture failed.

Since Mobile’s founding in 1702, the city had battled periodic outbreaks of yellow fever, a scourge marked by fever, chills, “yellow effusion” about the eyes and black blood.

A yellow fever epidemic that gripped the city in 1839 -- described by historians as the worst-ever up to that point -- claimed more than 600 lives and sickened thousands more. A few dozen Mobilians that year formed the Can’t-Get-Away Club, an organization dedicated to helping people suffering from the disease. The Samaritan Society and the Protestant Orphanage also formed that year in response to the outbreak.

The Rev. Dr. Gardiner C. Tucker, rector of St. John's Episcopal Church and the last surviving member of the Can’t-Get-Away Club, told the Mobile Press-Register in 1938 that the group’s name was “a mere confession. It meant exactly what it said: You can't get away.”

Alabama Gov. Arthur Pendleton Bagby convinced state legislators in 1838 to spend public funds to help Mobile battle the fever. Two decades later, Bagby, himself, was among the 1,300 Mobilians who died of the fever in the epidemic of 1858.

City defaults on debt

As if yellow fever and fires were not enough to contend with, the latter part of the 1830s also brought an economic depression known as the Panic of 1837, triggered by a combination of speculative lending practices, a sharp decline in cotton prices and restrictive lending practices in Great Britain. The downturn lasted for seven years and had devastating consequences in Mobile.

Taken together, Sledge wrote, the fever, fires and economic downturn were “triple blows” that caused “chaos, ruin and despair.”

In “Pillared City,” Sledge wrote that the total real estate in the city gained in value from a little more than $1 million to about $27 million between 1831 and 1837. By the end of the decade, the value had plummeted to $13 million.

Local banks failed. Commerce nearly ground to a halt.

“Everything is dull enough in the way of trade,” stated an article in Niles’ Weekly Register, a national news weekly. “The lawyers and sheriff are the only busy men in town.”

Falling land prices hit particularly hard in Mobile city government, which according to “Mobile: The New History of Alabama’s First City,” was particularly dependent on property tax revenue. The city in early 1839 defaulted on semiannual interest dividends due on loans.

A 1905 Mobile Register article reported that the city had borrowed heavily in the 1830s to finance roads and other projects in an effort to keep up with the population growth. That borrowing, as well as debt dating back to the Creek Indian War, totaled $650,000.

As a result, Mobile suffered the nation’s first municipal bond default, which would not be resolved until the following decade.

Updated at 10:25 a.m. to correct the name of Mobile Mayor George Washington Owen.